Faster vaccines likely if Moderna effort succeeds
NEW ERA New MRNA technology not fully understood but science points to speed, flexibility
Moderna’s experimental vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has emerged the front-runner in the global effort to stop the pandemic after an early trial showed it produced virus-neutralising antibodies similar to those found in recovered patients.
It is one of at least 20 experimental nucleic acid vaccines against Covoid-19 in various stages of clinical development that use the messenger RNA (MRNA) platform to elicit an immune response against SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)’S draft landscape of Covid-19 candidate vaccines. Most of these vaccines encode the spike protein of Sarscov2.
“If it is approved, it will be the first messenger RNA (MRNA) vaccine against any disease in the world. We don’t fully know the effectiveness of MRNA vaccines as yet. However, there is high quality science and pre-clinical evidence for this fast and flexible platform for vaccine development. We will have to wait and see,” said Dr Anurag Agrawal, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology, New Delhi.
The new vaccine, called MRNA-1273, encodes for a prefusion stabilised form of the spike (S) protein selected by Moderna in collaboration with the US Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
MRNA vaccines are promising alternatives to conventional vaccine approaches because of their high potency, capacity for rapid development and potential for low-cost manufacture and safe administration.
“This is great news as Rnaand Dna-based vaccines are faster and cheaper to produce than synthetic vaccines as it involves synthetic production of the genetic material, and not the virus. The production is labbased, so it can be quickly standardised and scaled up,” said Dr N K Ganguly, former director general, Indian Council of Medical Research.
Vaccines work by training the body to recognise and respond to the proteins produced by disease-causing organisms, such as a virus or bacteria.
Traditional vaccines use small or inactivated doses of the pathogen (virus or bacterium), or the proteins it produces, to provoke an immune response after vaccination without causing disease.
MRNA vaccines use a synthetic version of the genetic blueprint the virus uses to build its infectious proteins.
The synthetic nucleic acid is inserted into human cells, the humans cells read it as instructions to build fragments of the viral protein, which the immune system attacks by building antibodies against them.
The US pharma company Pfizer, is working on four nucleic acid vaccines, of which three are MRNA; the other one contains self- amplifying MRNA.
There is no approved vaccine for Sars-cov2, although around 120 vaccine candidates are in various stages of clinical trial.
“If MRNA-1273 is successful, it should be ready for commeriail use by January next year,” said Ganguly.
Moderna’s vaccine will be produced by the US government and Swiss contract drugmaker, Lonza Group, which has said it will produce one billion doses a year.
“We are investing to scale up manufacturing so we can maximize the number of doses we can produce to help protect as many people as we can from Sarscov-2,” Moderna Chief Executive Officer, Stéphane Bancel said in a statement.
The first tranche of 50 ventilators out of 200 ventilators being donated by the US administration to India is expected to arrive soon to bolster the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, American officials said on Tuesday. “This is a donation. The US government plans to donate 200 ventilators to India, and we expect the first tranche of 50 to arrive soon,” Ramona El Hamzaoui, acting director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said in a teleconference.
US health and human services (HHS) attache Preetha Rajaraman underlined the importance of countries such as India and the US working together to ensure widespread access to medical solutions for Covid-19. “We have to access solutions from different parts of the world. It is important to work together for access [to vaccines and solutions] and to supply chains.”
“USAID, on behalf of the US and through the generosity of the American people…is providing access to medical supplies and ventilators to India and other countries,” El Hamzaoui said.
She said USAID is working with India’s health ministry, the Indian Red Cross Society, and other stakeholders in both countries to assist in the delivery, transportation, and placement of the ventilators.
The equipment will complement India’s efforts to “make the best of care urgently available to those most in need without impacting the availability of these supplies to the American people”, she added.
The American officials were unable to state what authorities in the US had meant when they said the ventilators are “repurposed”.
El Hamzaoui said the US government, private companies, and non-profit and academic organisations have shared their expertise with partner countries such as India on the production of ventilators and other equipment.
People familiar with developments in New Delhi said Trump had made it clear that the ventilators are a donation. The firms providing the equipment will be paid by USAID, they said on condition of anonymity.
“As of now, the plan is to deliver 100 ventilators in May and the remainder in June. USAID will give us the final schedule next week,” said one of the people cited above,
El Hamzaoui, Rajaraman and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mission director Meghna Desai underlined the long-standing healthcare cooperation between India and the US that is driving current joint efforts against Covid-19.